


Reaction and Consequence

by zovinar



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cahoots, Gen, November 20 Interrogation (Persona 5), Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:03:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27639283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zovinar/pseuds/zovinar
Summary: It’s November 20th, and Sae hands him a phone.
Relationships: Akechi Goro & Kurusu Akira
Comments: 4
Kudos: 54





	Reaction and Consequence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eyrist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyrist/gifts).



> for eyrie! happy bday iluu \\(^*^)/

Sae hands him a phone.

Sae hands him a phone when he’s on his way down to the interrogation rooms.

Sae hands him a phone when he’s on his way down to the interrogation rooms where Goro will find a beaten and bloody Kurusu Akira and then kill him.

And Sae hands him a phone.

Before this very moment, Goro had been fully prepared to shoot Kurusu Akira in the head point blank.

But Sae hands him a _phone_.

(Goro is fully committed to shooting the leader of the Phantom Thieves but he’s not in the habit of lying to himself. Given the alternative? He’d really rather not)

Sae crosses her arms, shifting: unease masked as impatience. There’s a wariness in her eyes, for him or for…? But she still hands him a phone.

Goro’d like to think he’s fully committed to shooting Kurusu but he’s not fucking stupid. He knows the fallout will be much more compromising than what he’s used to.

(Goro will admit that he’d like to think that he is ready to kill Akira, but he’s never felt this level of resigned dread before)

But Sae hands him a phone and Goro thinks _‘oh.’_

Because Sae hands him _Kurusu Akira’s_ _fucking_ phone.

Because this…this could work.

* * *

Akira’s shaking slightly when the door opens, head still foggy. Is Sae coming back? Another cop? Or—?

“Hello Kurusu-kun,” says Akechi Goro with a charming smile as he steps through, closing the door behind him with a soft click. Walking a few steps closer, Akechi reaches over and grabs Akira’s chin, turning his head from side to side, and Akira flinches away at the harsh touch of leather against his bruises. “Par for the course, I suppose,” Akechi mutters, offhand and uncaring.

“…Akechi?” asks Akira tentatively.

“Hm, you look far more confused than I expected.” Akechi puts his attaché on the table with a sigh, straightening his tie slightly as he sits in the chair across from Akira and there’s a _look_ in his eyes that makes the hair on the back of his neck rise. “Perhaps delirious as well? It’s understandable as much of what you’ve probably said would seem rather inconceivable to most, despite the serum.”

“W-what do you mean, what’s going on?”

Akechi gives him an indulgent, almost pitying look. “Unfortunately, it seems like Sae-san doesn’t think you’re very smart, Kurusu-kun.”

And Akira stalls at that. “What?”

Akechi doesn’t answer his question. He just props his head up on a hand and tangents off.

“I wonder though. We both know that this ruse is built on rather shaky ground. Forgetting the fact that I’ve had more experience in the metaverse to begin with, I’m surprised no one thought you could be the one to give up the game.”

Akira just frowns, hands clenching on the table.

“The Thieves most likely thought I’d be too emotionally compromised to notice, or perhaps too cold if my ruse was better than expected. Sae…probably too distant, if she even knew enough to give a thought to the matter.”

“Akechi, what are you doing here? I-I don’t understand,” Akira stammers again.

“You don’t _know me,”_ snaps Akechi abruptly, venom in his eyes. “You ‘don’t understand’? What on earth are you _talking_ about?” Then he sighs, brushing his hair from his eyes. “And so polite about it as well. Kurusu-kun, I don’t even think you’d have the proper frame of reference to properly grasp what I mean when I say that Akira can be often quite nasty to me.” Then Akechi pops open his case and pulls out a gun and a silencer, putting them both delicately on the table to speak for themselves. “Please, Kurusu,” Akechi says quietly, “don’t insult my intelligence like this.” He looks Akira straight in the eye and says very clearly, “you are a fake.”

The cognition of Kurusu Akira jerks away from the detective, almost falling from his chair.

“What? No, I’m—”

“A _Fake,”_ says Akechi again with cutting steel in his voice. “A false facsimile of Kurusu Akira meant to stay the hand of justice in some sort of absurd trick that rests on my ignorance.”

Fuck. He knows.

“How!?”

“We have establishedthat I have a _working brain,_ Kurusu.”

“Then why are you even bothering with this?” Akira half shouts back, feeling frantic because no he _doesn’t_ understand Akechi, doesn’t know this boy the way Akechi seems to know him.

“Well…” Akechi reaches into his case again and pulls out a…is that a film camera? “I’ve more or less sussed out a method for taking photos in the metaverse.” He taps the plastic camera against his chin and smiles. “Although I will admit that the images aren’t as clear as I’d like, I still think your mangled corpse will show up well enough for my purposes. Do you ever wonder what happens to someone when one of their cognitions dies? Perhaps nothing, perhaps it wipes the slate clean. In that case I might even be doing Akira a bit of a favor.” 

_“Akechi please,”_ Akira begs, lost and afraid. “I don’t understand, what’s going on?”

“Still confused I see,” Akechi says with a chuckle. “She really does underestimate his intelligence.” Then Akechi picks up the gun and levels it at him. Akira sees his hand waver for just a second before the other comes up to steady it. “Apologies, but goodbye Kurusu-kun. I’ll be seeing you soon enough later.”

* * *

Exhaustion and his injuries aren’t enough to keep Akira down when he hears the first creak of stairs in the middle of the night. He’s not sure what woke him up, but the next creak sends his heart pounding. What on earth?

“M-mona?” No, he can feel Morgana curled up on the bed in the hollow behind his knees. “Sojiro?” he calls hesitantly, starting to sit up carefully. He’d only finally been able to send his guardian back off to his own house about an hour ago before he dropped off to sleep himself but it’s not _impossible_ that the man would decide to find his way back anyway.

“Joker?” mumbles Morgana as Akira fumbles for his bedside lamp.

“Someone’s here,” he whispers lowly in the dark. “Someone—”

The room’s main light clicks on and they both hiss against the burst of light against their eyes. A voice chuckles and Akira’s insides turn to ice.

“Sorry for letting myself in,” says Akechi Goro ruefully as Akira blinks spots from his sight.

“I—did you actually _break_ the door??” yelps Mona.

When he can finally see again, Goro’s face is utterly unimpressed as he opens one hand to show a jingle of metal strips hanging from a keyring. “Joker’s not the only one who knows how to pick locks, Mona.”

“Crow, what the _fuck_.”

“Ah,” a satisfied smile creeps across Goro’s face. “There it is.”

“You—what? What does that even mean?” What the hell is Goro doing here!? And why on earth is Akira not already arrested again if Goro knows he’s _alive_. 

“It means you are an idiot,” says Goro sing-song. “Did you really think that pathetic thing would have been good enough to fool me? It was practically farcical, that besides the fact that I have more experience with Metaverse affairs. Still, I feel that you should consider having a discussion with Sae while you’re actually coherent. She didn’t seem to hold you in very high regard when it comes to intelligence from what I saw.”

“What!?” hisses Morgana as Akira just looks blankly at Goro, utterly lost.

“I’ll give you a bye because you’re so fucked up,” says Goro bluntly, “but please at least try and keep up, Akira.”

“What?”

“Get up,” snaps the murderer in his bedroom. “I’m not going to talk to you while you just lie there like an imbecile. Up,” says Goro and Akira stands up. “Sit,” says Goro, pointing at his desk chair and Akira sits.

Goro tosses a packet onto the desk in front of Akira while he’s still trying to get his brain to reboot.

What the fuck.

“Those are the copies of course, in case you’re wondering. Shido has the originals as well as the negatives.” Goro drops himself onto the couch, loosening his tie with a sigh. “Do you know how hard it is to find a film developer in Tokyo these days? Fair warning” he says with a sidelong look as Akira reaches for the packet, “those will not be pleasant to see.”

“What are they?” 

“Good enough proof that I killed the leader of the Phantom Thieves.” Goro gives a soft, pleased smile as he eyes the packet. “Enough so as to postpone my own untimely death, even after your ruse is discovered.”

Morgana scrambles onto the desk with a hiss, clawing at the packet of photos even as Akira snatches his hand back.

“Yes,” says Goro with a crooked smile and cold, cold eyes, “they’re quite realistic. Sae-san has experience and therefore a firmer grasp of what an actual victim of such an act would look like. As such, the results are rather gruesome.” Goro leans back on the couch, hand coming to his chin. “You know, in the palaces of those less vested in the matter, the results would be quite different. Death conceptually is more of an abstract so when a cognition is killed they generally dissolve, much like how sha—” 

“ _Akechi_ , hisses Morgana, furious, “shut _up_.”

“You killed Haru’s dad,” says Akira quietly.

Goro casts a disgusted look out the window. “Please don’t tell Okumura I said this but that man worked me like a dog to build up his reputation and business over the last few years, I just about made that company what it is today. He was also close enough to my boss to know of me, if not my specific identity, and therefore was more than aware he was using a minor for his corporate espionage, sabotage, and contract kills.”

“So!?” hisses Morgana, back arching with fury.

“So _fuck him,”_ growls Goro, some of the bad tempered grace he shows in the Metaverse coming through. “Fuck that guy.” 

There’s not much Akira can say to that. ‘Fuck that guy,’ pretty much summed up his thoughts on Okumura before the man’s death.

“You know, when we told her about you, Sae went back to look through some of your older reports.”

“Oh?”

“The _tampered_ ones, she said it was clumsy work.”

“Mmh,” Goro hums with a smile. “Well if she thinks they’re just bad then the rest of the force definitely hasn’t noticed yet.”

“Yet?”

“Yes well, as she hasn’t had the chance to follow down the rabbit hole for those errors let me enlighten you to what she will find: other parties. The traces will point to both a still unknown perpetrator as well as a hidden hand behind the whole mess.”

“You’re framing your boss?”

“Well…not quite. Exposing him, more like, for being the guiding force in the matter.”

“Why should we care about your dumb workplace drama,” spits Morgana, eyes still hostile.

Goro places his phone on the table between them and enunciates clearly, “Shido Masayoshi.”

The Metaverse app chimes a hit.

“I think you might find the matter even more personal than you think.”

Joker raises his head to meet his eyes and takes in Crow’s knife sharp, intent look. 

Because for once, Crow isn’t playing around.

Because…this could work.

**Author's Note:**

> hmu at [tweeter.com](https://twitter.com/stovinar/status/1329652789442719751?s=19)!


End file.
